


Save Our Sons

by eudaimon



Category: Attack the Block (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:31:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moses wasn't the only one who fought hard in the block that night; Tia made it through too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Our Sons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raz0rgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raz0rgirl/gifts).



> This request was a real challenge, but I was super excited to write it. I really enjoyed finding Tia's voice and I hope that this is what you were looking for.
> 
> (I owe no small debt to the poem [SOS (SAVE OUR SONS) by Benjamin Zephaniah](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sos-save-our-sons/) here).
> 
> HAPPY YULETIDE <3

One thing that Tia's always known is this: that, sometimes, you don't have a choice. If you're lucky, about half the time, you get to do what you want to but, the rest of the time? You're doing what you have to or you're doing what somebody else needs you to do. So Moses turns up on her doostep with the whole gang in tow and Dennis has got a sword and Pest is _bleeding_ , and they're all yelling their heads off, telling scare-stories about monsters but she just her eyes on Moses and the look on his face.

And it's her house. And it's her business. Dimples? She understands why she's upset, and she's just trying to do the right thing, trying to keep trouble from the door and keep them all safe but, fact is? It ain't her fight. If Moses is in charge of his crew, then this here, these girl here, they're Tia's. This is her place, and she's going to keep them safe. And Dimples? She's just going to have to deal.

What else is she going to do? What choice does she have?

But trust him...trust _Moses_ to turn up on _her_ doorstep with this. Trust him. She always knew that, one day, serious badness was going to come following in his wake and she knew that he was going to turn up at her door with it. Because, maybe, not too many people speak to him kindly. Maybe he doesn't have that many people who want to hold him close. Tia's looked him in the eye and seen the warmth that's in him when he thinks that no-one's looking. She's kissed him on the mouth. This isn't the first time she's cleaned him when he's bloody. He knows that he's safe with her.

So, yeah, of course he's here.  
And, yeah, of course, she lets him in.

Which doesn't mean that she doesn't want to slap him silly.  
Not for a second. Right then, she could slap his face _off_.

For a start, who is this woman that he's bought into her house? This pale woman with that pinched, mean look. Tia knows that look. That look there? That's fear and dread and a shit time all trying not to show on her face at once. Tia trained herself out of ever looking like that when she was about five years old. _Truth_. Because there's no place in the block for a look like that, and that woman better learn quick or she's going to be taught, one way or another.

And then Moses starts talking and all she can do is stare.

 _First they send drugs. Then they send guns. Then they send monsters to kill us. They don't care, man. We ain't killin' each other fast enough._

From the state of Pest, it looks like they're dying plenty fast enough to her. Or close enough, anyway.

Let Moses think what he wants. Let Moses think that it's only the boys who suffer, when its women who bear the weight of it, day after day, year after year. Yeah, it might be the black boys who are dying, but who the hell does he think does the mourning? The buying flowers and the crying and the trying-to-rememeber-dying-to-forget kind of dancing. But girls are smarter. Girls are quicker. Let the government send what they want; girls just ain't gonna die as easy.

She's still thinking about that when them things come in, black as night and it all goes to hell so quickly, and she does it without thinking, stabbing at it like the lamp's a spear, saving Moses' back because, love him or not love him, it don't matter. Just fuck that shit. Fuck it. It's not happening here. Not in her block. It's not going down like that.

And if this is how it got be? Allow it. She'll deal.  
More than deal - she'll _rise_.

 

*

Her daddy, what she remembers most about him is that he was gentle. And kind. He was so kind. She thinks of him, suddenly, while she's fighting for her life, her and dimples, with a lamp and a fucking ice-skate. She thinks of her daddy as she kicks and shouts, as her heart pounds like a bird in her ribcage and all she sees are fireworks (where the fuck is Pest, anyway) and, inside, she's just proud that, when it came to it, she knew how to fight.

Somewhere, her gentle daddy turns his face away.

 

*

Telling him to stay away from her? Hardest thing she's ever had to do. But he's seen the way he looks at that other one, that _woman_. The nurse. So maybe he don't feel for her the way she feels for him? Maybe that's just the way it goes. And she can't have him in here. She saw the way that thing went for him, the way it dived for him. And if it's after him? Then she don't need him anywhere near her or her girls. For a moment, she closes her eyes, drags in a breath and remembers just now when she was cleaning his face; how warm he was and the close, sudden smell of him.

She's got this dream. Nawh. Dream's too fancy. She's got this idea of how it's going to be.  
And Moses is in it, always, but that doesn't mean that she wouldn't know how to let it go.

They run, the four of them, down all those stairs and then they crouch, under the overpass, heads down, arms around each other. Gloria cries and Dionne's got this weird, pinched look around her lips. Tia and Dimples just sit and look at each other for what feels like a really long time and then Tia holds out her hand and Dimples takes it. They squeeze each other's fingers until it hurts.

Maybe they sing, some shitty song, something by N-DUBZ or JLS. Something they know all the words to. And maybe that's how they get through.  
It could be minutes. It could be the whole night.

Later, she'll have no idea.

*

The fire burns so bright but all she feels is cold. She wraps her arms around herself. She listens to the crowd shouting his name and she finds a quiet place inside herself for Jerome and Dennis. Because someone's got to remember them, even while everyone's cheering and calling Moses a hero. And maybe he's still the kid she kind of loves. Or maybe that kid got burned away.

Maybe he's a hero. Maybe he's a _legend_.  
She thinks that, maybe, she's a part of that too. Because they made it through the night.

There he goes, saviour of the fuckin' block. They'll worry about getting him back later.

And she's not shouting with the rest of them.  
But that don't mean that she don't _believe_.

For now. Allow it.


End file.
